Laser cutting and mechanical cutting are the most popular cutting techniques nowadays and many manufacturing businesses use them as the core activity in the daily running. These two methods are different in principle and they have their pros and cons. For manufacturing companies, they need to fully understand these two so that they can select the most ideal one.
Mechanical cutting
Mechanical cutting refers to power driven equipment. This kind of cutting technique can cut any kinds of materials in shape according to the expected design. It often involves many different kinds of machines, such as drilling machine, milling machine and machine bed. Each machine bed has its own purpose. For example, the drilling machine is used for drilling hole while the milling machine is used to milling on the work piece.
Laser cutting
Laser cutting is a novel and efficient way of cutting. It uses high energy laser beam on the material surface to realize the cutting. These laser light is controlled by computer and the error could be very small. Therefore, the cutting precision is quite excellent. Besides, the cut edge is quite smooth without any burr. There are many kinds of laser cutting machines, such as CO2 laser cutting machine, fiber laser cutting machine, YAG laser cutting machine and so on.
Mechanical cutting versus laser cutting
In terms of cutting result, laser cutting can have better cut surface. It can not only perform cutting but also adjustment on the materials. Therefore, it is very ideal for the manufacturing businesses. Besides, comparing with mechanical cutting, laser cutting is more simple and neater in the whole cutting process.
Laser cutting doesn’t have direct contact with the material, reducing the risk of damage of the materials and pollution. Besides, it doesn’t lead to material warping which is often the side effect of mechanical cutting. That is because laser cutting have smaller heat affecting zone to prevent the material from deforming.
However, laser cutting has one “cons” and that is high initial cost. Comparing with laser cutting, mechanical cutting is way less expensive. That’s why mechanical cutting still has its own market. Manufacturing businesses need to make balance between cost and expected outcome to decide which one is suitable for them.
No matter what kinds of laser cutting machines are used, there is one thing in common - its laser source needs to be under stable temperature range to stay away from overheating. S&A Teyu water chiller units are widely used with various kinds of laser cutting machines and deliver cooling capacity ranges from 0.6KW to 30KW. We have CW series industrial chillers for CO2 laser cutting machines and YAG laser cutting machines and CWFL series industrial chillers for fiber laser cutting machines. Find out your ideal water chiller unit for your laser cutting machine at https://www.chillermanual.net/standard-chillers_c3
